The sun rises and I wake on the bench that wraps around the floor to ceiling windows of my new studio... where I have never painted. The world wakes with the dawn and I slide down off the bench pillow, patterned with little roses, and kneel and pray. I think of fractal snowflakes. I think of origami hamsters. I wish for change but I pray for solace.
*aside begins* Today I have been asked by my friend Amel to speak at his church. It is a Mormon church. He tells me there will be forty-two young women in attendance. The gist of the talk will be a play on the idea that "Life Happens While We're Making Other Plans." The twist, of course is, "While You're Waiting to Find Your Impassioned Path, You're Standing On It Not Doing Anything." Amel offered me an honorarium. I stared at him until he looked away from me. In a horrible moment, he was not my friend. He was a cog in a machine that is as corrupt and fallible as any of man's machines. I found my voice. I told him, gently, that his money would be put to better use elsewhere. There was a moment. And then he held me. I did not cry. But even closer than we have ever stood, his body so near mine and so familiar to me because Amel is built like my father was... even standing in his arms, I felt a distance between us that was new and unrepairable. His understanding and defense of an organized action I consider heinous has placed us in separate realities. This tightens my heart in my chest. I enjoyed having Amel in my reality while it lasted. *aside ends*
The concept of presents is pretty universal. Many of us got a refresher course a few days ago. The idea of bright or elegant paper (mystery) wrapped around an unknown gift (pleasure) is ageless and exciting. Even virtual reality environments like IMVU (the Mardi Gras 3000 official chat client) offer gifting between members, going so far as supplying a large variety of wrapping paper. In person or in pixels, unwrapping a mystery and making a discovery speaks to a primal part of us that is delighted and untamed. Our inner child... more like our inner Wild Thing.
Just this last week, I thought two friends were punking me. They said the exact same things to me about each other and about themselves at the exact same time (one was in live-chat with me, the other was in my forum inbox). I blinked at the words -- black on white and white on black. I blushed, which annoyed me. I thought about how I had crafted this beautiful metaphor about oceans and sail boats and cresting waves to explain just a few days ago how they were very different and that was just darn okay.
And now here they were saying... the exact... same... things.
*sigh*
Women.
But this moment got me thinking. It got me thinking about how you can know someone for years, formative years even, but truly not see what is inside their shiny wrapping. Sometimes? You don't even have a glimpse or have a clue. It just isn't... what? You want to know what my two friends were saying? You want me to live up to my kiss-and-tell, little-gamer-over-share reputation? Well, duh. Yeah, I'll tell you, but I'll get there in my time, so deal ;)
*aside begins* I am talking to a spicy gal pal of mine who thinks about sex about as much as a seventeen year old boy, which, statistics show, is an impressive amount. She is not seventeen (add ten years) but she is gorgeous and, statistic show, that gorgeous women do actually tend to have brains and so my buddy has something to say about her favorite subject every day. Sometimes twice a day. Today she is bent about Alabama, Colorado, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas and Virginia. Her cousin is having a boring time with her new husband. She's starting to get frustrated with her lack of... err... fun. So my friend decides to send her an itty bitty, adorable personal and private, small and sculpted fingertip massager from the most trusted name in bedroom items, Trojan. Their website is very professional with articles about sexual health and the importance of release for both mental clarity, energy and just general happy happy joy joy. Unfortunately, the itty bitty helper is illegal to ship into AL, CO, GA, KS, LA, MS, TX or VA. Because, my pal can only assume, women are not allow to come in a Red State. Yes, I went there. *aside ends*
And I am certain they are punking me and I'm searching for the humor in the situation. They are both coddling the other one. They are both avoiding all labels (identity is so confining). They are both protecting each other from the truths of life which are 1) not PG-13, 2) not always easy, 3) usually sexually charged, 4) all full up of power dynamics that aren't easily defined, and, most importantly, 5) are truths which are identical for both of them.
Because the awesome thing about life is that people can be in very different places and living very different lives, but be feeling many of the exact same things. This is all universal issues. Often, novels and films and good tv shows tackles these undeniable elements of life. Other times, we deal with them by saying aloud, to our dearest friend, in the middle of the night:
"I don't want you to judge me. But I can't talk to anyone else. I want you back. I need you back. I miss you. But you won't find me the same grrl you did before. I have changed... or I have discovered the woman, person, lover that has been inside me all along. I want you to meet her and like her but she doesn't like the assumption that she is anything like I used to be. And, by the way, I have *got* to tell you about what happened two nights ago on the hood of his car!"
Sometimes we unwrap ourselves like an onion or a pomegranate. Other times, we are discovered by another. Send almost always, we want our closet friend to be there when that final layer of glossimer paper is pulled away.
Because a wrapped gift is beautiful... but it is never as interesting as the intricate puzzle art that awaits inside.
*aside begins* I play the Secret Word Game with some friends at Christmas. There are four of us (three are mothers). We each have four pieces of paper. We describe each other and ourselves with ten words each. Then we get all four lists about us. We get to see how many of the words are the same. There is no losing. It is an interesting way to pass the time while the coffee is brewing and the donuts are cooling from the fryer and the XBox is cooling down after an epic frag match. We are laughing and blushing and snorting and chuckling. My friend Gille describes herself with ten words that none of us see her as. She loves this and so do I. Her partner says, "I guess I have another gift to unwrap for Christmas." I don't think I've ever heard a sexier statement. *aside ends*
Wrapping paper is sometimes not so pretty -- or, at least, the pretty parts are all covered up. Sometimes all there is to see are those ugly things called labels (as opposed to that truths called identity). The labels are stuck there by us and by the world and they cover even the outer wrapping that hides our heart away.
Oh... I'm thinking about caterpillars again. They spin as a wooly guy. They *dissolve* into goo and cells and biomatter. And from that primordial ooze emerges the mothy buttery new guy. The new creature, not so much the same as the old creature. If you liked the caterpillar, you may miss all that fur. But you may also find the mothra just as much fun. Give change a chance. Transformation can be family fun for everyone!
It seems easy to say that we should always show our true colors. It is actually as easy to say this as it is to laugh it off and say we must be prudent and protective. After all, we could change again. Why reveal who we are *now* if we may very well change, transform, tomorrow? Why live honestly if your opinions are always shifting? Because living in another way -- in a way that does not show who we are, that stifles our voice and unique thoughts and ideas -- is not living. It's acting. And acting never pays as well as they say it does.
EJ
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Everything to Me
A photo of blue icicle lights nestled among the low angles of a honey-oak attic room. It's tucked in my wallet. The photo, not the room... though... I have opened my black leather billfold so often now to glimpse the soft focus of those lights and the romantic coaxing of those artistic angles like a personal cathedral... so often now that I have wished, so hard, that, that photo was a portal, a gateway I could step through and be *there.* Right... there... oh.
I think I need to go dancing.
And so...
The fourth club is the charm. I've driven more than a hundred miles. I've never danced here before. The music is haunting and dark, something between alt-techno and goth. I'd be laughing if the DJ weren't live and laying down beats unique and raw, danceable, entrancing. And my eyes close and my body moves, arms up, hands open, hips rolling, and you slide into place behind me.
Imagine it. Deep breath. Let go. Imagine if everything you knew was suddenly different. Not just everything you'd been taught. Not just everything you'd been told. What if everything you knew as certainty in your heart was suspect?
Wait. The music changes. You lean tight against me. I don't know you. But I saw you across the tables when I first walked in. You are wearing perfume, light, that smells like oranges and cloves. Your hair is long and straight. Your skin is moonlight beneath the pearl shimmer of a button up. You are here alone.
What if only half of what you knew changed? But the changes were random and unexpected and followed no pattern, rhyme or reason. What if you discovered lies? What if you discovered flaws? What if you discovered jewels that were connected to your ability to breathe, that you could not live without? What if you grew up, slow and easy, all along beneath a brilliant blue sky... and then you woke up one morning, and the city streets were gone, the bustle had vanished, and the sky was black. Jet black... scattered with five million stars.
You are very careful not to lay hands on me. Your hands stay above your head, which is a head and a half above mine. My shoulders to your ribs and chest, my hips against your thighs, you toss your hair and I feel strands like ribbons of satin, neither blonde nor brunette but somewhere in-between, fall between my fingers and then slide away. My palms tingle. You are wearing a bracelet of small bells and I catch my breath.
Raised within the safety of convention and tradition and denomination and culture. It is easier to live and wake without the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The snake's strange whispering is rarely black and white, good and evil, but rather mixed messages like, “I knew this would be a trial for you.” and “We've always known.” The snake murmurs dissent and false discovery. But in the end, he knows nothing and no one. He is not Christ. When we reach past the snake, not to pluck the fruit, but to pull ourselves into the Godtree, it is then that we understand. We need not eat for Christ is our fruit.
The lights are blue. They arrived in my inbox via PhotoBucket and were accompanied by snow and machines and gentle things that make a young woman a woman like armor-clad fairies hanging among solar system models and family portraits of smiling parents. The blue lights hang in slender strands from the ceiling which is only six feet at its highest point and three feet at its lowest. They glow with an aura both warm and cool, suspended somewhere between temperatures when sensation wipes away the need for yes or no, day or night, hot or cold. The portal to my blue room is in my wallet. My wallet is tucked into the outside pocket of my soft, loose leather pants. A chain, silver with charms (a key, a lock, a motorcycle, a heart, a dove), snakes up out of the deep pocket and latches onto the belt loop on my right hip. The chain and charms make urban jiggle bells. I like the sound mixed with your bracelet brass.
We are raised with what works for our parents for we are part of their world. We are not yet making our own world. The reality we see, no matter how much we accept and embrace it, is their reality. It is not our own. If we attend public school we start to glimpse foreshadowing of our own reality, we start to witness the overlapping realities of others. But still, we belong to the path of our parents. When finally we come through the fabric of their universe and cross over into our own (sometimes violently, sometimes without barely noticing) it can be easy or hard but it is always intrinsically different. Even if the surface and patterns are the same, at the core, our reality is different. This is because we are not our parents. It is only when we stop craving their approval, dreading their disappointment, and living for their eyes, that our reality will at long last be revealed.
I turn to face you. I tip my head back to look in your eyes. Your features are bird-like, chiseled, elegant. Your eyes are brown, gold and green. Just beneath my focused vision I make out a small cross hanging between your collar bones. It is gold. Two more of the tiny brass bells hang on either side it. I don't look down directly. Your shirt is unbuttoned three of six. You wear nothing under it. The music pulses now in time with the lights in time with my body in time with the chorus of miniature brass bells. You are wearing jet black CK jeans. I decide you are a herald of the End Times... one of the riders perhaps... and I wonder where you left your horse.
Of course, when everything is suspect we doubt even ourselves and what our own senses tell us. The comfortable certainty that comes from living in someone else's reality is like hard candy or chocolate – sweet and soothing and addictive. Nice when someone else carries the burdens. Nice when someone else makes the rules and takes the blame and builds the truth. Safer that way. But one reality does not fit all. Reality is not wash and wear. It is customized and tailored and fit to our bodies and our hearts and our souls in a way that will feel so right and so perfect – like armor and evening gown/tux with tails all in one – that we'll realize we're knowing and feeling and living for the first time, for never before were we fully alive.
I am aware in these moments lost in music that everything about my reality falls away except for passion. Desire is my companion when I dance. She stomps, rocks, sways, slides, rolls her way between lights and strobes and backbeat rhythms until she fills my body. She is light and heat and clarity of thought and balance of action. She is ache and burning, taut and pulsing, muscle, bone, heartbeat. She carries over. She fuels me. She never leaves me. She is my celebration of being alive.
Christ carries over. Christ moves with us between realities. Not Christ as we are told He is, but the voice of Christ that speaks, privately, to each of us. The whispers of divinity. This is the only truth. Rules, dictates, man's guidelines... these alter and adapt between realities. Even morals can change. Even your favorite food, color, pass-time. But that internal voice of Christ – that voice from outside yourself that lights that place in your heart... that voice from within yourself that sends a beacon into the heavens with every prayer – will remain your own. Once you discover Him, you can never leave Him behind.
I am straddling my Kawa in the parking lot. I am looking at the photo again, illuminated by the single distant street lamp... illuminated by the aura of small blue lights. An engine kick starts. I want to fall into that portal of blue and wake up looking up at those strands of stars. I look up. You ride a black and white steel stallion that makes my T1000 look like a sleek toy. I watch you pull out of the parking lot. Your hair streams like a short cloak beneath your helmet. I look up. The sky is black. It is scattered with thirteen million stars. I was taught the names of the constellations.
Tonight I rename all of them.
EJ
I think I need to go dancing.
And so...
The fourth club is the charm. I've driven more than a hundred miles. I've never danced here before. The music is haunting and dark, something between alt-techno and goth. I'd be laughing if the DJ weren't live and laying down beats unique and raw, danceable, entrancing. And my eyes close and my body moves, arms up, hands open, hips rolling, and you slide into place behind me.
Imagine it. Deep breath. Let go. Imagine if everything you knew was suddenly different. Not just everything you'd been taught. Not just everything you'd been told. What if everything you knew as certainty in your heart was suspect?
Wait. The music changes. You lean tight against me. I don't know you. But I saw you across the tables when I first walked in. You are wearing perfume, light, that smells like oranges and cloves. Your hair is long and straight. Your skin is moonlight beneath the pearl shimmer of a button up. You are here alone.
What if only half of what you knew changed? But the changes were random and unexpected and followed no pattern, rhyme or reason. What if you discovered lies? What if you discovered flaws? What if you discovered jewels that were connected to your ability to breathe, that you could not live without? What if you grew up, slow and easy, all along beneath a brilliant blue sky... and then you woke up one morning, and the city streets were gone, the bustle had vanished, and the sky was black. Jet black... scattered with five million stars.
You are very careful not to lay hands on me. Your hands stay above your head, which is a head and a half above mine. My shoulders to your ribs and chest, my hips against your thighs, you toss your hair and I feel strands like ribbons of satin, neither blonde nor brunette but somewhere in-between, fall between my fingers and then slide away. My palms tingle. You are wearing a bracelet of small bells and I catch my breath.
Raised within the safety of convention and tradition and denomination and culture. It is easier to live and wake without the fruit from the tree of knowledge. The snake's strange whispering is rarely black and white, good and evil, but rather mixed messages like, “I knew this would be a trial for you.” and “We've always known.” The snake murmurs dissent and false discovery. But in the end, he knows nothing and no one. He is not Christ. When we reach past the snake, not to pluck the fruit, but to pull ourselves into the Godtree, it is then that we understand. We need not eat for Christ is our fruit.
The lights are blue. They arrived in my inbox via PhotoBucket and were accompanied by snow and machines and gentle things that make a young woman a woman like armor-clad fairies hanging among solar system models and family portraits of smiling parents. The blue lights hang in slender strands from the ceiling which is only six feet at its highest point and three feet at its lowest. They glow with an aura both warm and cool, suspended somewhere between temperatures when sensation wipes away the need for yes or no, day or night, hot or cold. The portal to my blue room is in my wallet. My wallet is tucked into the outside pocket of my soft, loose leather pants. A chain, silver with charms (a key, a lock, a motorcycle, a heart, a dove), snakes up out of the deep pocket and latches onto the belt loop on my right hip. The chain and charms make urban jiggle bells. I like the sound mixed with your bracelet brass.
We are raised with what works for our parents for we are part of their world. We are not yet making our own world. The reality we see, no matter how much we accept and embrace it, is their reality. It is not our own. If we attend public school we start to glimpse foreshadowing of our own reality, we start to witness the overlapping realities of others. But still, we belong to the path of our parents. When finally we come through the fabric of their universe and cross over into our own (sometimes violently, sometimes without barely noticing) it can be easy or hard but it is always intrinsically different. Even if the surface and patterns are the same, at the core, our reality is different. This is because we are not our parents. It is only when we stop craving their approval, dreading their disappointment, and living for their eyes, that our reality will at long last be revealed.
I turn to face you. I tip my head back to look in your eyes. Your features are bird-like, chiseled, elegant. Your eyes are brown, gold and green. Just beneath my focused vision I make out a small cross hanging between your collar bones. It is gold. Two more of the tiny brass bells hang on either side it. I don't look down directly. Your shirt is unbuttoned three of six. You wear nothing under it. The music pulses now in time with the lights in time with my body in time with the chorus of miniature brass bells. You are wearing jet black CK jeans. I decide you are a herald of the End Times... one of the riders perhaps... and I wonder where you left your horse.
Of course, when everything is suspect we doubt even ourselves and what our own senses tell us. The comfortable certainty that comes from living in someone else's reality is like hard candy or chocolate – sweet and soothing and addictive. Nice when someone else carries the burdens. Nice when someone else makes the rules and takes the blame and builds the truth. Safer that way. But one reality does not fit all. Reality is not wash and wear. It is customized and tailored and fit to our bodies and our hearts and our souls in a way that will feel so right and so perfect – like armor and evening gown/tux with tails all in one – that we'll realize we're knowing and feeling and living for the first time, for never before were we fully alive.
I am aware in these moments lost in music that everything about my reality falls away except for passion. Desire is my companion when I dance. She stomps, rocks, sways, slides, rolls her way between lights and strobes and backbeat rhythms until she fills my body. She is light and heat and clarity of thought and balance of action. She is ache and burning, taut and pulsing, muscle, bone, heartbeat. She carries over. She fuels me. She never leaves me. She is my celebration of being alive.
Christ carries over. Christ moves with us between realities. Not Christ as we are told He is, but the voice of Christ that speaks, privately, to each of us. The whispers of divinity. This is the only truth. Rules, dictates, man's guidelines... these alter and adapt between realities. Even morals can change. Even your favorite food, color, pass-time. But that internal voice of Christ – that voice from outside yourself that lights that place in your heart... that voice from within yourself that sends a beacon into the heavens with every prayer – will remain your own. Once you discover Him, you can never leave Him behind.
I am straddling my Kawa in the parking lot. I am looking at the photo again, illuminated by the single distant street lamp... illuminated by the aura of small blue lights. An engine kick starts. I want to fall into that portal of blue and wake up looking up at those strands of stars. I look up. You ride a black and white steel stallion that makes my T1000 look like a sleek toy. I watch you pull out of the parking lot. Your hair streams like a short cloak beneath your helmet. I look up. The sky is black. It is scattered with thirteen million stars. I was taught the names of the constellations.
Tonight I rename all of them.
EJ
Sunday, December 14, 2008
With This Ring
“We’re not a vendor. We're not your partner. We’re your gateway to this industry. If you think you run the show, you’re wrong. We’re the only game in town, kiddo. Everybody plays by our rules and so will you.”
And, for the first time in a long time, I am speechless not with delighted surprise or wonderment or laughter, but rather with cold, drowning shock.
I almost drop the phone.
* * *
Dictionary.com boasts thirty-three definitions of "ring." Some are nouns. Some are verbs. Two are idioms. If you a New Testament Christian, however, a ring is a noun and means only one thing: Now then and forever.
So you best be careful when you grant one.
In the lexicon of my faith there are English words that are commonly used in America (and elsewhere) that have slightly different meanings. “Offer” and “grant” leap immediately to mind, as do “pray” and “worship.” If I’m making a promise from the depths of my soul, I’m granting myself to another. If I’m bowing my head in prayer, I may as well be murmuring in conversation to Christ as I may be making love. But as a symbol, a ring, I think, is one of the most misused and misunderstood elements.
A NTC would rarely buy herself a fine ring. Street jewelry, sure, but rarely a quality piece of jewelry. A ring is a tangible symbol of a pledge or promise offered to you. Someone else has made a grant of themselves, in some way, by placing a ring in your palm. If you place it on your finger, you accept this grant for the duration never only intended but always specified at offering.
A traditional NTC wedding set is three rings which fit together or not, but which will always be worn. Though it is perhaps simpler in contemporary society to say these rings symbolize commitment, engagement and marriage, most correct would be to say that they are all rings offered and granted between two people who intend to spend the rest of their lives together. The first marks their time as lovers, private intimate partners without children, their focus on each other. The second ring marks a public acknowledgement of the relationship, a time of reaching out to friends and family and usually includes cohabitation and commitment ceremony beneath Christ’s own sky. The third ring celebrates the creation of a family, the adoption or birth of children.
And though wedding sets and love are often the first things people think of when rings are discussed, tonight my mind and heart keeps taking me to a different kind. A promise ring. A grant made and accepted. A simple silver ring with small block letters: MIND BODY SPIRIT. A ring whose twin has never left my finger outside of work in all these years. A promise that says: We will make the impossible possible.
* * *
“This friend of yours? The one with the *independent* CCG?” *scoff*
There is no friend but that’s not why with the scoffing. The scoffing is about the abject failure of every collectible card game launched by an independent company in the history of world since WoC invented the genre.
“They’ve chosen the hardest possible path and we’re not going to make it any easier for them.”
No duh.
“We’ll make sure their failure effects us as little as possible but refusing to list any product until we have stock in holding and proof of stock in their warehouse. We want their marketing plan, we want their exit plan, we want the insurance policy that pays for us to ship back stock when they go bankrupt.”
The sun is rising into my LA sky, burning away late morning clouds. On the East Coast, it is already noon and I feel like I’m playing catch up.
* * *
Cecil Adams over at www.straightdope.com answers questions, debunks myths and otherwise does witty, smarty stuff for people all over the world. He is research god of the universe and has a way of sharing information that is accessible and intelligent at once.
I had always thought it an urban myth that the Chinese word for “crisis” is made up of two characters signifying “opportunity” and “danger,” thus forming a kind of zen metaphor for life and business. And it is bunk, on the surface, seriously over simplified, but Cecil makes a bright and shiny argument for the connection between the three words that would entertain any linguist and intrigued this gamer grrl.
“We have to catch up!” one friend said to another.
“We’re *always* catching up!” snapped the response.
We’re always in crisis.
Well... yes. The Big Boys have been doing this – publishing books and games – since before our grandparents came to this country. They have massive revolving lines of credit and subsidiary sales that fuel small countries, let alone allow them to publish flops for four or five years without much more than a changing of the scapegoated guard.
As independent voices with independent presses – like Woolfe and Whitman – we should pray for a constant state of crisis. Because only in crisis are we driven to our best. Only in crisis do we find the chance for brilliant opportunities.
If it were easy... everyone would be doing it.
If it were easy... everyone would succeed.
I choose to do this, not because it is easy, but rather, specifically, because it is hard ;) I choose to do this because the struggle is sharp and painful and real and alive. I choose to do this for the same reason that women wake up in poverty and labor in factories and embrace their children.
If we waited until it were easy... if we waited until we were ready... no one important would ever be born and nothing worth doing would ever be done.
* * *
My cat has three legs and one eye, half a tail and one-point-five ears. I tried to PhotoShop him a second eye and a fourth leg and half-again more ear etc. I thought, “He’s a handsome beast. I could sell snaps of him at Dreamstime.” I tweaked and digital botoxed. I uploaded. He’s sold not a copy. And now he likes to bite me.
I learned my lesson.
“They’d have to have crazy store support.” The stranger, the corporate suit with the salaried position and the fat Christmas bonus, is still talking. I can tell he likes words like verbiage and lexicon and mind-share. I’d like to smack him up side the head with a piece of my mind-share. “Standing displays to be filled with their product right from our catalog. Banners. Posters. In-store experts. Decks in employee’s hands *months* before launch... and that’s just the beginning.”
“Just...?”
“I’d want to see care packages with gadgets and gizmos and crowd pleasers and tourney packs and a trophy. Incentive to learn the OS. Sex appeal, geek appeal, lock in the prime demo. This is the kind of finer details that independent companies have no idea how to lay down. Their idea of buzz is working the cons.”
My head is spinning. I wish you... I wish all of you... were with me.
* * *
Remember when I talked about my cup? My personal grail? Not half empty. Not half full. All full, all the time... just not all full of air. This is not a Polly Anna life approach. Because when a grail is all full up, all the time, you have to dance pretty dang well not to spill any of it.
And, baby, I am always dancing someone’s line. Sometimes man’s. Sometimes Christ’s. Almost never my own. But I’d rather be dancing than standing still.
Crisis averted = missed opportunity.
Don’t breath a sigh of relief that we have more time. Push harder now and then celebrate in the new quiet you earned at the end. Bring crisis. Bring it on, pour it down on me. Christ said, “How can you miss me when you hear my voice in your mind, in your heart, throughout your body like breath? My whisper is eternal and my body is only momentary, so why then would you desire my body rather than my word written or heard in your soul?”
How can I turn away from crisis? How can I rest and walk away? It is impossible for me to miss divinity.
“Later you said, ‘I cannot miss you when you're right here with me.’ I blink at you. I ache for you, miss you constantly. I miss you with every breath and every heartbeat and every impossible moment of time that I don't hear your voice. That, your voice, is my reality. Not your touch. Your voice. If you are speaking I can truly know you. I can taste the nuances of you, your emotional state of being. Your words are spoken with economy. You are not flashy. I have to stop myself, gregarious as I am, from talking over you because I come alive and awake when you speak with me. I overflow with joy, with living, when you express your inner thoughts, your interior process. We could be kissing, dancing, making love, and I would miss you if you were not speaking..."
Christ said, “You will hear me always for I will speak to you directly.”
I cannot miss this. This right now, right here. This moment. Seize the day? Seize the words we share. Claim the path. Know it better every day because it is hard to find the time.
Every day.
* * *
“Is there any way you would take on an independent line?” I finally ask. I cannot stop my voice from wavering. I’ve already pulled so many strings just to get this thirty minute conversation. This one question seems too much to ask. I don’t feel worthy. I am not in this league.
“No. The liability is too high.”
And I am about to hang up, to mutter thank you and good day and all the other things that spill from our slack mouths when our world has been crushed, dismantled and destroyed and we can’t let anyone know. And then:
“Except a brand like the Mardi Gras 3000 line. You know them? They have the elements. Built like a corporate property. But they have someone else handling them, maybe InCracker, because a brand that massive, that complex? You’d need a year of setup with us to really guarantee bank.”
And the niceties that spill from my lips are still all platitudes and my mind is still racing elsewhere and I still can’t let this stranger know how I am truly feeling... but Christ has whispered:
“He who makes a grant of himself to his fellow, in my light, in my name, and with faith, shall know that I walk now, then and forever, at his side to ensure the promise of that offering.”
Christ has, once again, broken my heart only to remake it. Crushed my world, only to rebuild it.
* * *
INTERNAL MEMO
The official launch of the Mardi Gras 3000 brand, collectible card game, novels, comics and role-playing game, has been moved to February 16, 2010.
Rejoice. Come walk the impassioned path with me.
Rally the troops.
EJ
And, for the first time in a long time, I am speechless not with delighted surprise or wonderment or laughter, but rather with cold, drowning shock.
I almost drop the phone.
* * *
Dictionary.com boasts thirty-three definitions of "ring." Some are nouns. Some are verbs. Two are idioms. If you a New Testament Christian, however, a ring is a noun and means only one thing: Now then and forever.
So you best be careful when you grant one.
In the lexicon of my faith there are English words that are commonly used in America (and elsewhere) that have slightly different meanings. “Offer” and “grant” leap immediately to mind, as do “pray” and “worship.” If I’m making a promise from the depths of my soul, I’m granting myself to another. If I’m bowing my head in prayer, I may as well be murmuring in conversation to Christ as I may be making love. But as a symbol, a ring, I think, is one of the most misused and misunderstood elements.
A NTC would rarely buy herself a fine ring. Street jewelry, sure, but rarely a quality piece of jewelry. A ring is a tangible symbol of a pledge or promise offered to you. Someone else has made a grant of themselves, in some way, by placing a ring in your palm. If you place it on your finger, you accept this grant for the duration never only intended but always specified at offering.
A traditional NTC wedding set is three rings which fit together or not, but which will always be worn. Though it is perhaps simpler in contemporary society to say these rings symbolize commitment, engagement and marriage, most correct would be to say that they are all rings offered and granted between two people who intend to spend the rest of their lives together. The first marks their time as lovers, private intimate partners without children, their focus on each other. The second ring marks a public acknowledgement of the relationship, a time of reaching out to friends and family and usually includes cohabitation and commitment ceremony beneath Christ’s own sky. The third ring celebrates the creation of a family, the adoption or birth of children.
And though wedding sets and love are often the first things people think of when rings are discussed, tonight my mind and heart keeps taking me to a different kind. A promise ring. A grant made and accepted. A simple silver ring with small block letters: MIND BODY SPIRIT. A ring whose twin has never left my finger outside of work in all these years. A promise that says: We will make the impossible possible.
* * *
“This friend of yours? The one with the *independent* CCG?” *scoff*
There is no friend but that’s not why with the scoffing. The scoffing is about the abject failure of every collectible card game launched by an independent company in the history of world since WoC invented the genre.
“They’ve chosen the hardest possible path and we’re not going to make it any easier for them.”
No duh.
“We’ll make sure their failure effects us as little as possible but refusing to list any product until we have stock in holding and proof of stock in their warehouse. We want their marketing plan, we want their exit plan, we want the insurance policy that pays for us to ship back stock when they go bankrupt.”
The sun is rising into my LA sky, burning away late morning clouds. On the East Coast, it is already noon and I feel like I’m playing catch up.
* * *
Cecil Adams over at www.straightdope.com answers questions, debunks myths and otherwise does witty, smarty stuff for people all over the world. He is research god of the universe and has a way of sharing information that is accessible and intelligent at once.
I had always thought it an urban myth that the Chinese word for “crisis” is made up of two characters signifying “opportunity” and “danger,” thus forming a kind of zen metaphor for life and business. And it is bunk, on the surface, seriously over simplified, but Cecil makes a bright and shiny argument for the connection between the three words that would entertain any linguist and intrigued this gamer grrl.
“We have to catch up!” one friend said to another.
“We’re *always* catching up!” snapped the response.
We’re always in crisis.
Well... yes. The Big Boys have been doing this – publishing books and games – since before our grandparents came to this country. They have massive revolving lines of credit and subsidiary sales that fuel small countries, let alone allow them to publish flops for four or five years without much more than a changing of the scapegoated guard.
As independent voices with independent presses – like Woolfe and Whitman – we should pray for a constant state of crisis. Because only in crisis are we driven to our best. Only in crisis do we find the chance for brilliant opportunities.
If it were easy... everyone would be doing it.
If it were easy... everyone would succeed.
I choose to do this, not because it is easy, but rather, specifically, because it is hard ;) I choose to do this because the struggle is sharp and painful and real and alive. I choose to do this for the same reason that women wake up in poverty and labor in factories and embrace their children.
If we waited until it were easy... if we waited until we were ready... no one important would ever be born and nothing worth doing would ever be done.
* * *
My cat has three legs and one eye, half a tail and one-point-five ears. I tried to PhotoShop him a second eye and a fourth leg and half-again more ear etc. I thought, “He’s a handsome beast. I could sell snaps of him at Dreamstime.” I tweaked and digital botoxed. I uploaded. He’s sold not a copy. And now he likes to bite me.
I learned my lesson.
“They’d have to have crazy store support.” The stranger, the corporate suit with the salaried position and the fat Christmas bonus, is still talking. I can tell he likes words like verbiage and lexicon and mind-share. I’d like to smack him up side the head with a piece of my mind-share. “Standing displays to be filled with their product right from our catalog. Banners. Posters. In-store experts. Decks in employee’s hands *months* before launch... and that’s just the beginning.”
“Just...?”
“I’d want to see care packages with gadgets and gizmos and crowd pleasers and tourney packs and a trophy. Incentive to learn the OS. Sex appeal, geek appeal, lock in the prime demo. This is the kind of finer details that independent companies have no idea how to lay down. Their idea of buzz is working the cons.”
My head is spinning. I wish you... I wish all of you... were with me.
* * *
Remember when I talked about my cup? My personal grail? Not half empty. Not half full. All full, all the time... just not all full of air. This is not a Polly Anna life approach. Because when a grail is all full up, all the time, you have to dance pretty dang well not to spill any of it.
And, baby, I am always dancing someone’s line. Sometimes man’s. Sometimes Christ’s. Almost never my own. But I’d rather be dancing than standing still.
Crisis averted = missed opportunity.
Don’t breath a sigh of relief that we have more time. Push harder now and then celebrate in the new quiet you earned at the end. Bring crisis. Bring it on, pour it down on me. Christ said, “How can you miss me when you hear my voice in your mind, in your heart, throughout your body like breath? My whisper is eternal and my body is only momentary, so why then would you desire my body rather than my word written or heard in your soul?”
How can I turn away from crisis? How can I rest and walk away? It is impossible for me to miss divinity.
“Later you said, ‘I cannot miss you when you're right here with me.’ I blink at you. I ache for you, miss you constantly. I miss you with every breath and every heartbeat and every impossible moment of time that I don't hear your voice. That, your voice, is my reality. Not your touch. Your voice. If you are speaking I can truly know you. I can taste the nuances of you, your emotional state of being. Your words are spoken with economy. You are not flashy. I have to stop myself, gregarious as I am, from talking over you because I come alive and awake when you speak with me. I overflow with joy, with living, when you express your inner thoughts, your interior process. We could be kissing, dancing, making love, and I would miss you if you were not speaking..."
Christ said, “You will hear me always for I will speak to you directly.”
I cannot miss this. This right now, right here. This moment. Seize the day? Seize the words we share. Claim the path. Know it better every day because it is hard to find the time.
Every day.
* * *
“Is there any way you would take on an independent line?” I finally ask. I cannot stop my voice from wavering. I’ve already pulled so many strings just to get this thirty minute conversation. This one question seems too much to ask. I don’t feel worthy. I am not in this league.
“No. The liability is too high.”
And I am about to hang up, to mutter thank you and good day and all the other things that spill from our slack mouths when our world has been crushed, dismantled and destroyed and we can’t let anyone know. And then:
“Except a brand like the Mardi Gras 3000 line. You know them? They have the elements. Built like a corporate property. But they have someone else handling them, maybe InCracker, because a brand that massive, that complex? You’d need a year of setup with us to really guarantee bank.”
And the niceties that spill from my lips are still all platitudes and my mind is still racing elsewhere and I still can’t let this stranger know how I am truly feeling... but Christ has whispered:
“He who makes a grant of himself to his fellow, in my light, in my name, and with faith, shall know that I walk now, then and forever, at his side to ensure the promise of that offering.”
Christ has, once again, broken my heart only to remake it. Crushed my world, only to rebuild it.
* * *
INTERNAL MEMO
The official launch of the Mardi Gras 3000 brand, collectible card game, novels, comics and role-playing game, has been moved to February 16, 2010.
Rejoice. Come walk the impassioned path with me.
Rally the troops.
EJ
Sunday, December 07, 2008
The Secret Identity of Jackalopes
"For someone who fights labels so hard, you sure do care about what they say."
My friend Jess is teasing me. We're snooping around a leather and oddities boutique she likes and I'm checking brands. I laugh but I still won't buy Harley Davidson chaps. They never wear right and I hate the way they pinch my rear without even knowing my name.
As we drive home, I start to think hard about how some labels actually are important. They actually mean something. They tell the world something. Hm. And you know what, baby? I sure do hate feeling like a hypocrite.
"It seemed so easy to just use a label. But guess what? In the end, the label was as one dimensional as the word of man. And what I am, what *all* of us are is as far from one dimensional as divinity can take us. Christ did not mean for us to condense ourselves into MySpace Q&As or even eHarmony personality profiles. I want fewer labels and more faith. I want to be defined by my actions and my beliefs. I want to be hard to compartmentalize. I want to play hard to get.”
I am talking with Jess again but on another day, at Thanksgiving dinner with a house full of friends who either love us or hate us. What a day in H-E-Double Lizards. That day, I was thankful for a great many things but I was most thankful that it finally ended.
We are talking about a mutual friend we've known for years and known about (as a public figure) for far longer. He's dating someone fifteen years his junior. Dating for the first time in thirteen years after being a bit of a renowned playa. I mean, boy had fangrrl websites dedicated to him. The one with the pic of a red Corvette and a little hand-drawn arrow pointing to the slightly dented hood was my favorite. They used to line up (word of mouth, you know *snort*) and he was just alpha enough to oblige. Until he woke up one day and realized he was bored. So he up and became a happy daddy.
Jess says, "They're gonna hit a rocky place when they start to sleep together." (Jess is kinda blunt, btw.) "Because Gen Y grrls have this aversion to roles and, you know, labels. She'll expect him to be all top all the time." Jess took another bite of stuffing. She weighs 115 pounds and has the metabolism of a hummingbird. Jess builds mythological jackalopes in CAD for fun and has a career that some think is summed up by her body. (And did I already mention Jess is blunt?)
I thought about this statement of Jess'. I thought about it quite a bit. Maybe this because I once had a killer crush on this certain alpha wolf with wild hair, piercing eyes and a real-man, rock-my-world physique. *clearing throat* Yeah... maybe. But also possible is that I was thinking about this because I felt horribly *responsible.*
I know this young woman he is dating. I know she even reads my blog occasionally. By spouting off about labels and their inherit evils, did I just make my older friend's life kinda... well... awkward? Does this younger grrl expect him to be one way all the time? To be the label he wears most publically and nothing else? Will she be flexible? *crooked grin*
I mulled. I mused. I even kicked myself. They were swift kicks. Then my friend Cris wrote to me out of the blue:
"Hey, EJ. I've been reading your blog, of course, and something stuck out. Just wanted to share my thoughts.
"There is a difference between a label and an identity. A label is what others put on you; an identity is what you claim for yourself. There can be many labels and many parts to an identity. Labels and identities can change. They may have overlapping elements. As I watch the young women and the young men in my life struggle against labels, I wonder: Do they understand that an identity is something there for the taking? That they can take those labels that apply and claim them as their own? That claiming an identity, growing an identity, is empowering?"
This was the key I was looking for. This was a beautiful inspiration. And suddenly everything, all the little pieces, came together. Because labels can be claimed... and they can also be redefined. What it means for me to be a Christian... a grrl... a gamer... a biker... a lover... a raver... I have rewritten these labels to fit me. And more and more, as I feel life try to strip me of my strength and rob me of choices, I find myself proudly claiming these labels (and others) as something like armor and sword and shield. Something others might just call identity.
La-bel (ley buh l) noun, meaning 3: A short word or phrase descriptive of or defining the properties of a person or group, to indicate nature, ownership, etc.
I-den-ti-ty (ahy den ti tee) noun, meaning 2: The condition of being oneself or itself, and not another; a condition or character as to who a person is; the state or fact of being.
I-den-ti-ty (ahy den ti tee) noun, meaning 9: In mathematics, an equation that is valid for all values of its variables.
There is another reason to claim your own identity. A reason that not only helps us clarify who we are in the world and in our hearts, but that makes sure we live an examined life. Sometimes we have to add weaknesses to our armor... or, if not weaknesses, than cautions. What are the negative labels that you have assigned yourself or that the world has assigned you? Liar? Drama Queen? Quitter? Ask yourself: Is there any part of these labels that are valid? If you claim these labels as your own, you can (not so) jokingly warn others... and by claiming them, by accepting responsibility for them, you can begin to change them. Because possession is nine tenths of the law, baby, and if you own it, you have the control.
And with great control comes great responsibility. We may denounce the world and all the labels that it tries to paste on us. But we still have to find our identity. Yes, in the end, we are us. I am EJ. You are you. But who *am* I? Who *are* you? Just a name doesn't help us live in the world. With Christ, we need nothing but a name. In prayer, Christ needs no labels or even an identity plastered to us. But that is because we must come naked as new babies when we kneel before our Lord. We do not come dressed in armor and sword and shield.
But would Christ send us into the fray as babies? Does He intend us to fight without weapon, defense or protection? You know the answer. Our faith makes our identity glow in the dark. Soldiers of divinity.
There is yet another avenue to explore in this discussion of how we survive in this, the world of man. There is yet another reason to build our identity, that armor where every custom-made iridescent scale is carved from a redefined and tailored label.
When we claim a label, make it part of our identity, we claim a past. A history. A community. A heritage that often crosses race and gender and nationality. It is a past that can be good and bad, dark and light, but it connects us to the world and to the events of this world in a way that allows us to become educated and fully-realized citizens. We, in effect, grow up.
"When our supper plates
brim full of nightingales
and the gentle wren lays
dead but singing
it is then we stop, beloved.
Do not weep but rather realize
that those who have marched before
who have beaten back the thorns
that you do not see
back behind the thorns that remain
realize that because of them
you need not weep
for they have wept enough for you."
EJ
My friend Jess is teasing me. We're snooping around a leather and oddities boutique she likes and I'm checking brands. I laugh but I still won't buy Harley Davidson chaps. They never wear right and I hate the way they pinch my rear without even knowing my name.
As we drive home, I start to think hard about how some labels actually are important. They actually mean something. They tell the world something. Hm. And you know what, baby? I sure do hate feeling like a hypocrite.
"It seemed so easy to just use a label. But guess what? In the end, the label was as one dimensional as the word of man. And what I am, what *all* of us are is as far from one dimensional as divinity can take us. Christ did not mean for us to condense ourselves into MySpace Q&As or even eHarmony personality profiles. I want fewer labels and more faith. I want to be defined by my actions and my beliefs. I want to be hard to compartmentalize. I want to play hard to get.”
I am talking with Jess again but on another day, at Thanksgiving dinner with a house full of friends who either love us or hate us. What a day in H-E-Double Lizards. That day, I was thankful for a great many things but I was most thankful that it finally ended.
We are talking about a mutual friend we've known for years and known about (as a public figure) for far longer. He's dating someone fifteen years his junior. Dating for the first time in thirteen years after being a bit of a renowned playa. I mean, boy had fangrrl websites dedicated to him. The one with the pic of a red Corvette and a little hand-drawn arrow pointing to the slightly dented hood was my favorite. They used to line up (word of mouth, you know *snort*) and he was just alpha enough to oblige. Until he woke up one day and realized he was bored. So he up and became a happy daddy.
Jess says, "They're gonna hit a rocky place when they start to sleep together." (Jess is kinda blunt, btw.) "Because Gen Y grrls have this aversion to roles and, you know, labels. She'll expect him to be all top all the time." Jess took another bite of stuffing. She weighs 115 pounds and has the metabolism of a hummingbird. Jess builds mythological jackalopes in CAD for fun and has a career that some think is summed up by her body. (And did I already mention Jess is blunt?)
I thought about this statement of Jess'. I thought about it quite a bit. Maybe this because I once had a killer crush on this certain alpha wolf with wild hair, piercing eyes and a real-man, rock-my-world physique. *clearing throat* Yeah... maybe. But also possible is that I was thinking about this because I felt horribly *responsible.*
I know this young woman he is dating. I know she even reads my blog occasionally. By spouting off about labels and their inherit evils, did I just make my older friend's life kinda... well... awkward? Does this younger grrl expect him to be one way all the time? To be the label he wears most publically and nothing else? Will she be flexible? *crooked grin*
I mulled. I mused. I even kicked myself. They were swift kicks. Then my friend Cris wrote to me out of the blue:
"Hey, EJ. I've been reading your blog, of course, and something stuck out. Just wanted to share my thoughts.
"There is a difference between a label and an identity. A label is what others put on you; an identity is what you claim for yourself. There can be many labels and many parts to an identity. Labels and identities can change. They may have overlapping elements. As I watch the young women and the young men in my life struggle against labels, I wonder: Do they understand that an identity is something there for the taking? That they can take those labels that apply and claim them as their own? That claiming an identity, growing an identity, is empowering?"
This was the key I was looking for. This was a beautiful inspiration. And suddenly everything, all the little pieces, came together. Because labels can be claimed... and they can also be redefined. What it means for me to be a Christian... a grrl... a gamer... a biker... a lover... a raver... I have rewritten these labels to fit me. And more and more, as I feel life try to strip me of my strength and rob me of choices, I find myself proudly claiming these labels (and others) as something like armor and sword and shield. Something others might just call identity.
La-bel (ley buh l) noun, meaning 3: A short word or phrase descriptive of or defining the properties of a person or group, to indicate nature, ownership, etc.
I-den-ti-ty (ahy den ti tee) noun, meaning 2: The condition of being oneself or itself, and not another; a condition or character as to who a person is; the state or fact of being.
I-den-ti-ty (ahy den ti tee) noun, meaning 9: In mathematics, an equation that is valid for all values of its variables.
There is another reason to claim your own identity. A reason that not only helps us clarify who we are in the world and in our hearts, but that makes sure we live an examined life. Sometimes we have to add weaknesses to our armor... or, if not weaknesses, than cautions. What are the negative labels that you have assigned yourself or that the world has assigned you? Liar? Drama Queen? Quitter? Ask yourself: Is there any part of these labels that are valid? If you claim these labels as your own, you can (not so) jokingly warn others... and by claiming them, by accepting responsibility for them, you can begin to change them. Because possession is nine tenths of the law, baby, and if you own it, you have the control.
And with great control comes great responsibility. We may denounce the world and all the labels that it tries to paste on us. But we still have to find our identity. Yes, in the end, we are us. I am EJ. You are you. But who *am* I? Who *are* you? Just a name doesn't help us live in the world. With Christ, we need nothing but a name. In prayer, Christ needs no labels or even an identity plastered to us. But that is because we must come naked as new babies when we kneel before our Lord. We do not come dressed in armor and sword and shield.
But would Christ send us into the fray as babies? Does He intend us to fight without weapon, defense or protection? You know the answer. Our faith makes our identity glow in the dark. Soldiers of divinity.
There is yet another avenue to explore in this discussion of how we survive in this, the world of man. There is yet another reason to build our identity, that armor where every custom-made iridescent scale is carved from a redefined and tailored label.
When we claim a label, make it part of our identity, we claim a past. A history. A community. A heritage that often crosses race and gender and nationality. It is a past that can be good and bad, dark and light, but it connects us to the world and to the events of this world in a way that allows us to become educated and fully-realized citizens. We, in effect, grow up.
"When our supper plates
brim full of nightingales
and the gentle wren lays
dead but singing
it is then we stop, beloved.
Do not weep but rather realize
that those who have marched before
who have beaten back the thorns
that you do not see
back behind the thorns that remain
realize that because of them
you need not weep
for they have wept enough for you."
EJ
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